News still matters

San Jose Mercury News employees show their solidarity with guild negotiators working on a wage re-opener in Denver.

Thirteen Guild-CWA bargaining units representing newsroom, advertising, circulation, and production departments at Digital First Media opened joint negotiations for a wage increase Thursday in Denver.

Union negotiators proposed a $1 per hour raise for all employees effective July 1. Management offered no proposal, stating that budgeting is under way for the next fiscal year that begins July 1, and that managers won’t be prepared to begin serious negotiations until June.

The union-represented workers of DFM reached agreement last July on three-year contracts, including a 3 percent wage increase that took effect on August 1, 2016, for most bargaining units.

The new contracts called for joint, annual wage reopeners in early 2017 and 2018. Unions requested that the negotiations begin early each year, before the company normally would begin its budget discussions.

Thursday’s session lasted approximately an hour as union representatives pushed for a new commitment from the company to shift its focus away from cutting costs toward investment in quality journalism and customer service.

In the past year alone, DFM management has cut Guild-covered staffs collectively by roughly 30 percent, from 950 to 675 employees, which has propped up profits at the expense of slashing newsrooms and outsourcing key business and delivery operations.

Pacific Media Workers Guild

We are the Pacific Media Workers Guild, Local 39521 of The Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America. We represent more than 1,200 journalists and other media workers, interpreters, translators, union staffs and freelancers.

Pacific Media Workers Guild

We are the Pacific Media Workers Guild, Local 39521 of The NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America. We represent more than 1,000 journalists and other media workers, interpreters, translators, union staffs and freelancers.

Subscribe via email

Enter your email address to receive notifications of new posts by email.